Ornamental Peasant

Digital flâneur, a free-range yokel in tweed. Diversions of a dead tree media dinosaur, rural cottage resident & digital serf. e-mail subscription to Ornamental Peasant

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Independence Day | The Star Spangled Banner 

O! Long May it wave O'er the land of the free, And the home of the brave.

Hand colored lithograph, published by Currier & Ives, NY. Reproduction from The Library of Congress

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Rural Idyll | Eric Ravilious, the British illustrator and designer, career lasted only about 20 years, but during that time he created a body of work built on a school of painting in watercolor that had existed in this country since the 18th century. Like his predecessors, he handles that difficult medium with breathtaking assurance, using flat washes of subdued color to create simple, clearly defined forms. Shapes, patterns and textures are created through the modulation and control of tone. The son of a London antique dealer, Ravilious studied design at the Royal College under Paul Nash. By the later Twenties, he had mastered the art of wood engraving. ... Richard Dorment continues  Eric Ravillous (1903 - 1942) The Long Man of Wilmington; The Wilmington Giant Watercolor on paper  Signed and dated 'Eric Ravilious/August [19]39'. Height: 44.2 cm, Width: 54.5 cm,  (sheet) London, Victoria & Albert Museum,  Inv. P.3-1940 

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Romance | This is probably the oldest surviving Valentine's letter in the English language. It was written in February 1477 by Margery Brews to her fiancé John Paston  (1444 - 1504). Describing John as her 'right well-beloved valentine', she tells him she is 'not in good health of body nor of heart, nor shall I be till I hear from you.' She explains that her mother had tried to persuade her father to increase her dowry - so far unsuccessfully. However, she says, if John loves her he will marry her anyway: 'But if you love me, as I trust verily that you do, you will not leave me therefore.' There was a happy ending to the story, as the couple would eventually marry.  Transcription etc at BL UK.

"To my ryght welebelovyd cosyn, John Paston, Swyer, be this letter delyveryd &c.

Ryght wurschypfull and welebelovyd Volentyne, in my most umble wyse, I recommande me un to yowe, &c. And hertely I thanke yowe for the letter whech that ye sende mebe John Bekarton, wherby I undyrstonde and knowe, that ye be purposyd to come to Topcroft in schorte tyme, and withowte any erand or mater, but only to hafe a conclusyon of themater betwyx my fader and yowe; I wolde be most glad of any creatur on lyve, so that the mater myght growe to effect. And ther as ye say, and ye come and fynde the mater no more towards yowe then ye dyd aforetime, ye wold no more put my fader and my lady my moder to no cost ner besenysse, for that cause,, a good wyle aftur, wech causeth myne herte to be full hevy; and yf that ye come, and the mater take to some effecte, then schuld I be meche mor sory and full of hevynesse.

And as for my selfe, I hafe done and undyrstond in the mater that I can or may, as Good knowyth; and I let yowe pleynly undyrstond, that my fader will no more money parte with all in that behalfe, but an C li. And l. marke, whech is ryght far fro the acomplyshment of yowr desyre.

Wherfore, yf that ye cowde be content with that good, and my por persone, I wold be the meryest mayden on grounde; and yf ye thynke not yowr selffe so satysfyed, or that ye hafe mech mor good, as I hafe undyrstonde be yowe afor; good, trewe, and lovyng volentyne, that ye take no such labur uppon yowe, as to come more fo that mater, but let it passe, and never more to be spokyn of, as I may be yowr trewe lover and bedewoman duryng my lyfe.

No more unto yowe at thys tyme, but, Almyghty Jesus preserve yowe, both body and sowle, &c.

Be your Voluntyne,

MARGERY BREWS"

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Happy New Year Detail - The Peasant Wedding Dance Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Netherlandish,  (1526/30 - 1569) Executed c. 1566 Oil on panel, 47 x 62 in. (119.4 × 157.5 cm.)  Michigan: Detroit Institute of Arts, Ac.30.374

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Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.

Bach composed the Christmas cantata in Leipzig, probably in 1745 to celebrate the end of the Second Silesian War on Christmas Day. The composition's three movements all derive from the Gloria of an earlier Missa (Kyrie and Gloria in B minor) written by Bach in 1733, which he would use later as the 'Gloria' of his Mass in B minor.  (BWV 232). 

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MCMXIV (1914)

Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring: The place names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheat's restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Copley, John, British, (Manchester, 1875 - 1950, London) Recruits, 1915 Lithograph on thick, textured, cream antique laid paper Image: 14 1/8 x 16 11/16 inches (35.9 x 42.4 cm) New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, B1987.21.14

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The Country Election, 1852 The Country Election records Election Day 1850 in Saline County, Missouri when Bingham himself stood for a place in the State Legislature. Bingham lost to E. D. Sappington who he shows as the unprincipled candidate in the shiny top hat standing on the steps handing out his card.  Sappington and his campaign did try to buy votes with liquor, also he was related to the local election judge and the clerks. Bingham shows himself sitting on the courthouse steps with a friendly dog, being watched over his shoulder by two men in white straw hats, as he draws the scene. Bingham painted this scene twice. The first 'County Election' was exhibited at the Whig National Convention in Baltimore, which Bingham attended in July 1852. The copy painting (now St. Louis Art Museum) was completed later that summer, and like the first was used to promote the democratic ideals of the Whig Party to a national audience.  When Sartain engraved the painting in Philadelphia Bingham wrote that he wanted “the design to be as national as possible – applicable alike to every section of the Union, and illustrative of the manner of a free people and free institutions.”  George Caleb Bingham swore never to be involved in politics again but he was elected to the Missouri legislature in 1848 and served as state treasurer throughout the Civil War. John Sartain, American, 1808 - 1897,  after George Caleb Bingham, American, (Augusta Co. VA, 1811 - 1879, Kansas City, MO) Engraving, hand-colored with glazes, on wove paper, sheet 23 3/4 x 31 7/8 in. (60.3 x 81 cm.) James Irwin, published by Goupeil & Co., 1854 Winston-Salem, NC., Reynolda House Museum of Art. Inv. 1983.2.37

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Movin' the merch | Christie's, the London auction house, is to break with 250 years of tradition and offer items on its website for immediate purchase at a fixed price, just as eBay allows shoppers to bypass the bidding process. by clicking a “Buy It Now” button ... artnet,  Hyperallergic Telegraph,  Presumably this is prompted by competitor Sotheby's June announcement of a collaboration with ebay and ebay's own live auctions hub which collaborates with traditional bricks and mortar auctioneers to stream sales live on-line.

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Internet Pricing | America’s expensive and slow Internet is more than just an annoyance, the sluggish service could have long-term economic consequences for American competitiveness. The reason the United States lags many developed and developing countries (Canada, the EU, Japan, S. Korea, etc.) in both speed and affordability, according to people who study the issue, has nothing to do with technology. It is an economic policy problem — the lack of competition in the broadband industry.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission in 2002 reclassified high-speed Internet access as an information service, which is unregulated, rather than as telecommunications, which is regulated. Its hope was that Internet providers would compete with one another to provide the best networks. That didn’t happen. The result has been that they have mostly stayed out of one another’s markets. The cities in the US which have the fastest Internet, Chattanooga, Lafayette and Bristol, all have publicly owned networks -- not Verizon et al.. More at NYTimes

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Emperor's New Clothes | Magnificent damning critique by Jed Pearl in the New York Review: 

"Imagine the Jeff Koons  retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art as the perfect storm. And at the center of the perfect storm there is a perfect vacuum. The storm is everything going on around Jeff Koons: the multimillion-dollar auction prices, the blue chip dealers, the hyperbolic claims of the critics, the adulation and the controversy and the public that quite naturally wants to know what all the fuss is about. The vacuum is the work itself, displayed on five of the six floors of the Whitney, a succession of pop culture trophies so emotionally dead that museumgoers appear a little dazed as they dutifully take out their iPhones and produce their selfies. ...

 ... And in Koonsland, if transcendence doesn’t work, there is always shopping. The clothing chain H&M, a sponsor of the Whitney show, has just come out with a handbag bearing Balloon Dog’s image, priced at $49.50; it was unveiled along with the new flagship H&M on Fifth Avenue and 48th Street, the store’s façade emblazoned with giant images of Balloon Dog.Just north at Rockefeller Center, Koons is letting the summer tourists get a gander at the latest of his topiary concoctions, a work called Split/Rocker, with the combined half-heads of a horse and a dinosaur covered with real flowering plants. A nearby bar is offering a Koons cocktail, the “Split/Rock Margarita.”

To evaluate this onslaught can feel hopeless, if not downright absurd, as if one were some Judge Judy of the art world, examining a situation so incredible that the very act of judgment calls one’s credibility (and credulity) into question. 

Koons is a recycler and regurgitator of the obvious, which he proceeds to aggrandize in the most obvious way imaginable, by producing oversized versions of cheap stuff in extremely expensive materials. ...The Koons retrospective is a multimillion-dollar vacuum, but it is also a multimillion-dollar mausoleum in which everything that was ever lively and challenging about avant-gardism and Dada and Duchamp has gone to die. ...

... The essential fact about the Koons cult, however, is not that Koons invented it, but that it has gained such extraordinary traction, in the art world and well beyond. Day after day, the crowds are lining up outside the Whitney, waiting to get in to see the Jeff Koons show. What are they to make of the tens of millions of dollars that have been squandered on this work? What are they to make of the critics and historians who are defending Koons with a belligerence that allows for no debate? And what are they to make of the Whitney Museum of American Art?

That Koons will be Koons is his own business. That he has had his way with the art world is everybody’s business. No wonder the people in the galleries at the Whitney look a little dazed. The Koons cult has triumphed. For his next project Koons should consider manufacturing a ten-foot-high polychromed aluminum Kool-Aid container. It could come right after Play-Doh in the “Celebration” series." full text  

Jeff Koons, American, ( York Pa., 1955 - ) Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988 Porcelain, 42 x 70 ½ x 32 ½ in. (106.68 cm x 179.07 cm x 82.55 cm) One of three, part of the Banality Series. San Francisco, SFMOMA, Inv 91.1  Image, NYRB

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200 Years Ago | On August 24, 1814, after defeating the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, a British force led by Major General Robert Ross occupied Washington D.C. and set fire to many public buildings, including the White House, the Capitol, and other facilities of the U.S. government.  Ross decided to destroy only public property and spared that of private citizens, The attack was in part a retaliation for the American actions in the Raid on Port Dover and the burning of the British capital of York, now Toronto. Later white paint was used to hide the fire damage, so the 'Executive Mansion' became known as 'The White House.'

Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn commanded the detachment of marines, part of the joint naval and military force under Major-General Ross, which seized the city of Washington for 24 hours. Cockburn, having  practiced joint operations on shore in the Mediterranean, provided support and guidance to the army throughout the campaign. Ross gave credit to Cockburn for the idea of the attack on Washington. In the portrait he is shown wearing rear-admiral’s undress coat and hat, 1812–25 pattern, breeches and hessian boots. In the background are the burning Capitol buildings in Washington. 

Cockburn's other claim to fame is as the man who carried Napoleon to exile on St Helena in 1815.  John James Halls (1776–1853)  Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, 1772-1853, Oil on canvas, 94 x 58 1/2 in., (2390 x 1485 mm.) Exhibited, Royal Academy, 1817. now, London, National Maritime Museum, BHC2619

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 Colour Theory | "At the same time, at various points it (London, National Gallery, Making Colour, until 7 September) touches on the question of how pigments have changed over time. Blues have become greener, or have almost entirely faded; greens have become brown or blue, reds have become pink and some yellows have disappeared; and several of the paintings on display have been chosen to illustrate this. Thus Niccolò di Buonaccorso’s 14th-century The Marriage of the Virgin originally included green trees in the background; the green was achieved by a layer of yellow over blue, but the yellow has now disappeared, leaving the trees entirely blue. Much later Gainsborough was able to use the more stable Naples yellow for a dress in the famous picture of his two daughters chasing a butterfly, and it has survived much better. Color deterioration was not limited to paintings produced before the 19th century, as can be seen in some works by Van Gogh, who was often obliged to use cheap materials. What is displayed on the walls of galleries today inevitably looks different from the way it looked when it left the artist’s studio, even without taking into account the vexed question of the types of varnish that were used in the past and the way they’ve changed over time. How conscious artists were of these irreversible changes is unclear. ...." Charles Hope's full review at LRB

Moses Harris (c. 1730 - c. 1788) Etching, hand colored, signed in the plate lower right,  From: The Natural System of Colours Wherein is displayed the regular and beautiful Order and Arrangement, Arising from the Three Primitives, Red, Blue, and Yellow, The manner in which each Colour is formed, and its Composition, The Dependance they have on each other, and by their Harmonious Connections Are produced the Teints, or Colours, of every Object in the Creation, And those Teints, tho’ so numerous as 660, are all comprised in Thirty Three Terms.  London [c.1785 ?], pl.[2]

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Glad Rags | Although humans have always expressed themselves through personal adornment, the contemporary sense of fashion as a changing set of styles which fall out of vogue on a yearly basis had to be invented. And one of the people who helped invent it was an otherwise unexceptional sixteenth-century German accountant named Matthäus Schwarz. (1497-1574). Schwarz's Trachtenbuch (Book of Clothes) was clearly designed for display, and on the whole it paints him in a good light. It announces Schwarz as a person of taste, a supporter of his city and family, a courtly lover, and a well-rounded Renaissance man. It is also, arguably, one of the first fashion books, a distant progenitor of a Vogue lookbook, as it were .. // Matthäus Schwarz (1497-1574) Working as a clerk in Jacob Fugger's Goldene Schreibstube (Golden writing room), at 19 years and eight months of age.  

Matthäus Schwarz (1497-1574) At an archery contest at twenty-two years of age Manuscript, on parchment, by Schwartz, with 137 colored illustrations; 36 by Narziss Renner c. 1520; 101 executed over the next 40 years, mostly by Renner until 1536 and then by artists from the studio of Christoph Amberger

Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, via Appendix

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Our Apples, Ourselves | "Long has the fate of mankind been tied to apples. They got Adam and Eve banished from Paradise. With the apple, Johnny Appleseed tamed the New World. And then, in the late 19th century, Paul Cézanne declared he would paint the otherwise unremarkable fruit and “astonish Paris with an apple.” 

Cézanne did just that. His paintings of apples confused critics and art enthusiasts alike. People were astonished that apples could look so ugly, and be so poorly painted. Some thought Cézanne’s still lifes were actually a joke, or an insult. It is difficult, looking at Cézanne’s paintings today, to feel the full force of that outrage. But there were certain artistic standards in the late 19th century. Painting that came out of the official Academy of Art (Écoles des Beaux-Arts) was expected to look a certain way. Brushstrokes, for instance, were supposed to be smoothed out and worked, more or less, into the finish of the painting. A glossy and well-varnished surface was expected. ..." Morgan Meis continues. Paul Cézanne, (January 19, 1839 - October 22, 1906) The Kitchen Table (La table de cuisine), 1888–90, oil on canvas, 33 3⁄8 × 39 1⁄2 in. (84.8 × 100.3 cm), Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 2819 Still Life with Carafe, Milk Can, Bowl, and Orange (Carafe, boîte à lait, bol et orange), 1879–80, oil on canvas, 21 1⁄4 × 23 3⁄4 in. (54 × 60.3 cm), Dallas Museum of Art, 1985.R.10, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection.

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Centenaries | On 24 June 1914, the train service from London to Worcester ran and pulled up at Adlestrop at 12.45 p.m. according to Edward Thomas’s field notebooks.

Then we stopped at Adlestrop, thro the willows cd be heard a chain of blackbirds songs at 12.45 & one thrush & no man seen, only a hiss of engine letting off steam.

Stopping outside Campden by banks of long grass willow herb & meadowsweet, extraordinary silence between the two periods of travel.

Four days after Thomas paused at Adlestrop (he was going to visit his friend Robert Frost in Dymock), the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Archduchess Sophie met their end in Sarajevo. The assassination was a fluke. In July 1915 Thomas enlisted to fight in the Great War. There was no requirement for him to join up. He was 37, married with three children. On the 9th April Thomas was killed by a shell blast in the first hour of the Battle of Arras at an observation post whilst directing fire. Adlestrop was published 17 days later in the New Statesman. More at #LRB

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Memorial Day | Commissioned from the celebrated American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and dedicated as a monument on Memorial Day 1897, the Shaw Memorial has been acclaimed as the greatest American sculpture of the 19th century.

The memorial commemorates the valiant efforts of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts, the first Civil War regiment of African Americans enlisted in the North. Saint-Gaudens first conceived the memorial as a single equestrian statue of Colonel Shaw. Shaw’s family, uncomfortable with the portrayal of their son in a fashion typically reserved for generals, urged the artist to rework his design. The sculptor revised his sketch to honor both the regiment’s famed hero and the soldiers he commanded. It shows the regiment marching off to war down Beacon Street on May 28th 1863, the arrangement of muskets and flag against the background echoes that in Velazquez's celebrated 'The Surrender of Breda' (1634-5) (Madrid, Prado).

After inaugurating the bronze Boston memorial, Saint-Gaudens continued to modify the plaster version, reworking the horse, the faces of the soldiers, and the appearance of the angel above them. The final plaster was installed at the National Gallery of Art in 1997, on long-term loan from the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, American, 1848 - 1907 Shaw Memorial, 1900 patinated plaster overall (without armature or pedestal): 368.9 x 524.5 x 86.4 cm (145 1/4 x 206 1/2 x 34 in.) overall (with armature & pedestal): 419.1 x 524.5 x 109.2 cm (165 x 206 1/2 x 43 in.)

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, long term loan from U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire X.15233

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Veritas | Probably written circa 1935-6, as one of a group of cookery and household manuals Food and Frugality, Happy Kitchens Happy Homes by the ‘late Dietitian, American Hospital of Paris’.  The pamphlet was first published in the 1930's by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland and re-issued in many editions by Catholic Truth Societies across the globe . The cover designer of this issue remains unidentified. It seems that urbanites, in danger from the evils of modern living, were the target audience. The cover above give a good idea of the styles thought best to appeal to the Irish city dweller in need of Truth. While these and similar publications appear quaint and often hilarious it is worth remembering that they formed part of a puritanical culture which held sway in Ireland through most of the 20th century..

Mary De R Swanton, ? American, fl.mid C 20th  Modesty and Modernity Dublin : Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, 1951. 20 p. (rpr. 1959 16 p.)